Today in History February 11

660 BC – Traditional date for the foundation of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.
AD 55 – The death of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman empire, on the eve of his coming of age, under mysterious circumstances, clears the way for Nero to become Emperor.
1534 – Henry VIII of England is recognized as supreme head of the Church of England
1790 – The Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers, petitions U.S. Congress for the abolition of slavery.
1794 – First session of United States Senate opens to the public.
1808 – Jesse Fell burns anthracite on an open grate as an experiment in heating homes with coal.
1889 – Meiji Constitution of Japan is adopted; the first National Diet convenes in 1890.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

1937 – The Flint sit-down strike ends when General Motors recognizes the United Auto Workers trade union.
1939 – A Lockheed P-38 Lightning flies from California to New York in seven hours two minutes.
1953 – Cold War: President Dwight D. Eisenhower denies all appeals for clemency for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
1978 – Censorship: China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.
1979 – The Iranian Revolution establishes an Islamic theocracy under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
1981 – Around 100,000 US gallons of radioactive coolant leak into the containment building of TVA Sequoyah 1 nuclear plant in Tennessee, contaminating eight workers.
1990 – Nelson Mandela is released from prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a political prisoner.
2006 – Vice President Dick Cheney shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, while participating in a quail hunt in Riviera, Texas.
2013 – The Vatican confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI would resign the papacy on 28 February 2013, as a result of his advanced age.
2017 – North Korea test fires a ballistic missile across the Sea of Japan.

In the February 7 Today in History, Thomas More was erroneously referred to as Lord Chancellor of the ‘United Kingdom’ when in fact, as Barrett DiPaolo has pointed out, “Thomas More was not Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom, as there was no United Kingdom at the time. He was Lord Chancellor of England. Henry VIII was only King of England (and Wales) at the time; Scotland had its own king.”

A little more history…
“In 1603, the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland were united in a personal union when James VI, King of Scots, inherited the crowns of England and Ireland and moved his court from Edinburgh to London; each country nevertheless remained a separate political entity and retained its separate political, legal, and religious institutions.
On 1 May 1707, the Kingdom of Great Britain was formed, the result of Acts of Union being passed by the parliaments of England and Scotland to ratify the 1706 Treaty of Union and so unite the two kingdoms.
The term “United Kingdom” became official in 1801 when the parliaments of Britain and Ireland each passed an Act of Union, uniting the two kingdoms and creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Irish Free State became independent, initially with Dominion status in 1922, and unambiguously independent in 1931. Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom.”